Western Roman Empire

^ Whilst the deposition of Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 is the most commonly cited end date for the Western Roman Empire, the last Western Roman emperor Julius Nepos, was assassinated in 480, when the title and notion of a separate Western Empire were abolished. Another suggested end date is the reorganization of the Italian peninsula and abolition of separate Western Roman administrative institutions under Emperor Justinian during the latter half of the 6th century.

In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the Roman Empire's western provinces collectively during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into western and eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative purposes. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by 554, at the end of Justinian's Gothic War.